Hi all,

We had a fantastic autumn birding excursion yesterday, with lovely
foliage and great weather.

Among the ~40 species, the highlights included a very striking MERLIN,
which showed tremendous persistence in maintaining his perch while
fighting off 3 or 4 territorial Black-Billed Magpies. (Kittitas
county, not far from the Cle Elum airport.)

Later, we had 3 beautiful RUFFED GROUSE on FR 9716, the road to
Diamond Head, just past Discovery Trail off of US 97.

On Table Mountain, we had excellent views of a flock of several WHITE-
BREASTED NUTHATCH picking at pine cones in a tree less than 10 feet
from where we stood. They were very tolerant of our presence; in fact,
they outlasted us, as we finally had to leave.

In the quickly fading light, at the Cle Elum ponds, we were treated to
a cute family of one adult female HOODED MERGANSER and her three young
ones. Our day was complete here, with two very playful river otters
putting on a fun show for us.

happy birding,
isadora arevalo wong
chupaflor at igc.org
seattle, wa